Redesigning medical data into actionable content

Jan 29, 2011

A great talk here from Thomas Goetz, exec editor at Wired, looking at how Wired redesigned medical data to make it more accessible and engaging for patients – if it is more accessible and engaging it will help behaviour change (eg the redesigned data shows you are at risk and it also clearly tells you what you should do next).

This is a great example of how content can be redesigned to really engage with the user. And with medical data the stakes are higher as easy to understand information can help patients to take action.

An interesting theme here is personalisation – turning data into content that resonates for the reader, it addresses them directly. I'm sure there are other pools of data out there that could be redesigned in similar ways.

At the heart of this project was the user – the patient. Put the user, your user personas, at the heart of what you are trying to achieve with your content and you will be much better placed to engage with them.

This project is a really good example of exposing data that has very limited relevance to the reader – in this case patients – and transforming it into something relevant and useful (ie engaging).